Here
you find
music, you find your lovers, you will find
your spouse. You find politics
and go about business. The leaders of the
world
are within
ear-shot. ~You
see things no one has seen
before~

You'll see the pitiful
and
the insane. You will find your
life's friendships and know the
great and
real world from
beyond
your closed and tiny door.

"See you not -
when in headlong
contest,
the chariots
have seized upon the plain
and
stream in a torrent along the barrier;
when
the young driver's hopes are high and throbbing
fear
drains
each bounding heart?

On they press
with circling lash,
thrown forth at slacken rein;
while
fiercely flies the glowing wheel.
Now sinking low,
now raised aloft, they seem borne through empty
air
and
soar skyward.
No rest,
no stay is there; but a cloud of yellow sand
chases from above,
and
they are wet with the foam and breath of the mad
pursuit..."

"There
was Scorpus at 27.
And Fuscus of the Greens, the first to
win in his very first race, died
at age twenty-four; Crescens, who died
at twenty-two, having raced since
he was thirteen; and

Scorpus

Polyneices,
who
died at twenty-nine, having
raced
for
each of the four factions... "

Polydus

The Roman
Circus
was the world’s biggest Gambling Casino and every
town from Britain to
Egypt had a track.

Imagine
all of today’s football, baseball, basket-ball
and soccer players belonging
to only four teams, world-wide. The
teams were funded by the state
with the best stables, grooms and trainers.

Originally
there were the
Whites for winter-Snows opposing the Reds, for the
Dog-star of Summer.

Then fans
squared off into
highly-charged “factiones”. The Greens were
Earth people - farmers, road
construction, building trades, teamsters and the
Army.Their
opposite, the “Blues”
of Autumn held for Navigation - boats and
harbors, fisheries, sea-faring
commerce and the Navy.

Everyone
had their “team,”
and the diameterically opposed Greens and Blues
became the common person’s
only real political system. They combined
politics, unions, gambling, and
the sports and entertainment industries - all
into one.

The old
expression, “When
in Rome...” -If you were Roman, you went to the
races.

People
worked hard and gambled;
and there was only one show: the “Circus.”

Tracks ran
all over the City.
The Vatican used to be a race-track. St Peter’s
Cathedral was
built over Nero’s Circus. Vatican
Circus

Famous was
the Arval Circus,
Circus Flaminus, Circus Maxentius and the
largest sports arena in the world,
the Circus Maximus.

Fully 12
Coliseum arenas
could fit on the floor of the Circus Maximus. It
accommodated 385,000 people,
-a throng the size of Woodstock.

There was
boxing, wrestling
and running. Equestrian arts of relay and single
horse-racing, precision-riding;
Gladiatorial events, wild-beast hunting and
raging wars between battling
troops.

The whole
of Rome attended.
- The Roman Garrison was there to police a
vacant city.

The
specticle was fantastic.
Parades and processions of dignitaries,
vanguished Kings, Gods and Goddesses.
Exotic and trained animals, acrobats; - the
massive throng with it’s energy
building for the races; vendors of every
imagineable food and drink - hockers
running up and down taking bets. Flags and
streamers flurrying over pounding
bleachers while their clowning cheer-leaders
dodged death on the track. There were
deified super-stars,
- like Scorpus who won 2000 races before dying
in glory at 27.

The
Imperial Palace loomed
on the wall so the Emperor could watch from his
veranda. Many Emperors
were staunch Greens or Blues members.

Aspects of scholarship and circus foundations
were
researched, among other sources, through "Roman Circuses, Arenas
for Chariot
Racing", Humphrey, John H. 1986; permissions from University of
California
Press. Some images were obtained with Google-Earth.